


Persephone on New Caprica

by Redrikki



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drug Use, F/M, New Caprica, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s winter on New Caprica and they’re all Persephone here.  A collection of short stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Six Seeds

“Did you know, as a child I was dedicated to Demeter and Ares?” Gaius asks, head down, pen hovering uselessly over the latest Cylon decree. They’re imposing a ten percent tithe on all of New Caprica’s meager agricultural products. It’s just another form of rationing and an excuse to detain the owners of the worlds’ last remaining goats.

“A farmer’s son and this” – he angrily waves the document in Felix’s face, crumpling the edges in his clenched fist – “this is my harvest.” He’s just drunk enough that his posh accent is slipping, a bit of Aerelon’s harshness seeping through the cracks, and Felix can almost believe that this little rant isn’t just another one of Gaius’s lies. 

Drawn by Gaius’s tantrum, his Six slips from the sleeping area, ready, as always, to make everything better. The possessive hand she rests of Gaius’s shoulder is gentle, but she glares at Felix like its his fault her lover is drunken wreck being forced to steel food from the mouths of his people. “Is everything alright?”

Gaius drops the rumpled document and cradles his head in his hands. “I have a headache,” he whines like a petulant child. 

Caprica smoothes his hair and reaches for his meds. Bracketing him gently in her arms, she carefully shakes a pill from the bottle into the waiting palm of his hand. Her face is a picture of concern, tenderness and affection. Felix almost feels sorry for her. 

Gaius contemplates the pill in his hand. “I was a child of Demeter, but now I belong to God.” He raises the pill, displaying it like a priest with a temple offering. “Here is my pomegranate.” He tosses it back with a shot of ambrosia as Caprica’s arms slide off his shoulders and her face crumples. The Cylons don’t believe the stories, but she definitely gets the reference. 

She reaches for him as he stumbles past her towards the bed, but lets her hand drop as he lurches unsteadily away. When she turns back to face Felix her eyes are shiny with unshed tears. She takes a deep breath and restores a bit of her composure. “I’ll have him sign these after he wakes up.”

That night over dinner, Felix’s Eight tells him about the people she’s managed to save. Six more people are free and back with their families. She devours his grateful kisses, pushing him back across the bed. Felix’s parents dedicated him to Athena and Apollo but they’re all Persephone here.


	2. From a Cylon8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three short stories of what was and what could have been for an Eight on New Caprica.

**Empty**

Eight feels numb when she wakes up in her new body. Then the memories hit and the pain rushes in. She remembers explosions, gunfire and the snarling faces of the insurgents storming the detention center who shot her like her life, like her baby’s life, were nothing. By the time she’s downloaded, its all over. There is nothing left on New Caprica but Cylons, corpses and trash.

Felix is gone.

It’s not that she loves him. She doesn’t, not like Caprica loves Baltar or her sister Eights love Helo and Galen. Felix had been an assignment, nothing more, but he had been _hers_ in a way that nothing had ever been before. He had been hers to have and to hold, to lie to in the dark, her fingers combing through curls that belonged to her too. He’d kissed only _her_ , frakked only _her_ , loved only _her_. But she hadn’t loved him, not his dumb trusting eyes or the way his handwriting was unlike anyone else’s. No, she hadn’t loved him, didn’t love him. She’d just thought he’d be hers forever.

Her Felix is gone, but Gaius Baltar had stayed. Out of all the humans, he was the only one. Eight hates the sight of him. She hate’s Caprica’s smug face and the way Three floats about with her sister Eight’s child in her arms. She hates the insurgents who shot her and Felix who left her. Above all, she hates her new body. She knows it’s exactly the same as her last one, it just feels so much emptier.

***

**Fool**

The day Felix Gaeta is taken into custody for spying against the Cylons, Eight tracks down the handful of people she’d spared from his lists and kills them all. She had trusted him. She had believed his doe eyes and his whispered I-love-yous when he’d been betraying them, betraying her, all along. Three was right. Humans were treacherous liars with no real respect for the sanctity of life. As she stands over the bodies of Heather Redman and her baby, Eight projects Felix. His face is satisfyingly hurt and shocked. Eight sneers at his expression. Who’s the fool for love now?

***

**Domesticated**

It took the Cylons only minutes to destroy the human’s battlestars, but it took ages for the humans to learn to accept and appreciate their love. Even now, after all these years of free clinics, improved sanitation and public executions there are still occasional insurgent attacks. Frakking ingrates all of them, even Felix. He isn’t an insurgent, but sometime he says these things, gets this look, that makes Eight want to smack him through a wall. 

The first time she actually does it, he stares at her like a frightened animal. His bruises and wary eyes are a silent reproach, and it makes her furious. It’s not like it’s her fault, not like she wants to hurt him. She doesn’t talk when she joins him in bed, just strokes his bruises and claims what God gave her. When they’re done she tells him it wont happen again and waits for him to apologize.


	3. Erosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so it goes. The mountain of her will pitted against his stupid fraking streams.

It’s not like she’s expecting when he takes her. He doesn’t rape her, doesn’t torture her, doesn’t hold her face down in a barrel of water. He just talks, not threats even. It’s all whispered endearments, psychobabble and crazy prophecy bullshit. Kara Thrace and her special destiny as his personal frak-toy.

She finds a way to kill him before the end of the week. It’ll probably come back to bite her in the ass, but she needs to show him that she won’t play his little mind games. A few days later he comes back, just as gentle and patient as before, and they start all over again.

***

He goes away sometimes. Not just when he’s dead, but like he has a job, something better to do than play this fraked-up game of house. There’s nothing to do while he’s gone, no books, no wireless, nothing. She does push-ups, runs up and down the stairs and imagines what she’d paint on the walls if she could. She talks to herself, pounds out angry tunes on an invisible piano and wonders if she’s going crazy.

The first time she finds herself relieved to see him she kills him messy. She spends the next day scrubbing his blood from the carpet just to have something to do.

***

She wakes in the night from a dream of them fraking, frantic, covered in paint, against a wall. It wasn’t making love, but it wasn’t quite hate-sex either and now she’s wet and gasping. Her hand is already down the front of her sweats, ready to scratch that itch, when she feels his weight on the bed beside her. He’s naked and hard, a little smile on his face like he’s sharing her dream and liking it a whole lot more. She straddles him, grinding a pillow into his face. She rides him as he bucks, his fingers frantically grasping for purchase on her face, in her hair. He comes all over her as he dies and she spends the rest of the night in the shower.

***

And so it goes. The mountain of her will pitted against the steady flow of his patient love, seeping into her, seeking out her cracks like one of his stupid fraking streams. It’s been months now but she’s holding out, she won’t give in. Where he is gentle, she is violent, stabbing him as he cuts her meat. They’ll keep playing this game until one of them finally breaks. Tonight his body is the one cooling on the floor, but she’s not really sure she’s winning.


End file.
